Chapter Text
Outside the furthest bounds of Gotham, in a wooded area thick with tall pines and leafy maples, lies an unmarked grave.
To call it a grave is misleading. It is surrounded by dying, shriveled bushes shaded brown to orange behind a dried-up stream of foul-smelling, brackish mud. Instead of a tombstone or marker, a mound of disturbed dirt is overlaid by a single, large rock rounded into an oval and conquered by moss. No funeral home was willing to take the body.
One month and twenty-two days after Tim’s murder, The Joker was gunned down in an abandoned corner of Amusement Mile. Today, Cass decided to visit his resting place.
Supposedly, it went like this:
There was a terrorist organization running new business in the city. Nobody knows where they originated, only that they weren’t from Gotham. Rumors ranged from far-right extremism in Europe to religious zealots from the West Coast. It had everyone worried. Even Penguin. Even Black Mask.
They specialized in trafficking of all kinds. Sex trafficking, child trafficking, weapons trafficking. That last one was particularly important. They were not like the Crime Families of old who still sparsely held on to a notion of honor and certain “rules” that must be followed. This group had no rules, no lines they weren’t willing to cross. What mattered was who was paying and how much. Nothing else. They would sell anything to anyone in pursuit of their unknown goals.
Their latest acquisition was a massive shipment of illegal weapons. Every and all kinds. Dirty bombs, mustard gas, biological agents. The Joker received news of this and wanted in. He planned to poison the children’s hospital with anthrax. A meeting was eventually arranged. Amusement Mile at one in the morning.
The Joker was his usual self. He brought out his usual tricks: the gun with the white flag inside, the jolly buzzer, the rose that squirts acid. He was giggles and laughter, chaos and depraved whimsy, all in an effort to put on a show. Usually, Gotham’s underbelly tolerates it—his annoying clown shtick—out of fear or trepidation. Many were afraid of The Joker and knew what he was capable of, the atrocities he’d committed: the graveyards filled, the countless slaughtered, the many ruined. It is for this reason they put up with him.
But these people weren’t from Gotham, and they were not afraid. They found him annoying.
They pumped him full of lead when he reached for his toy gun. His body was discovered in the morning. He died at the hands of the nameless. No grand exit, no curtain call, no last joke. His corpse wasn’t smiling.
There was no celebration at the news, no cheers or whoops in the streets nor colorful banners hung from every corner. The city was dumbstruck; a disquiet swept through every inch, as if nobody knew what to do with themselves, as if nobody knew what to feel. Evil was killed, but it was killed by another evil. An evil also sickening and cruel. There were no reasons to celebrate because Gotham remained unchanged. There still lurked malevolence, there still lurked crime, there still lurked death. Just from a different source.
The Joker wasn’t the personification of chaos. He wasn’t a mad god. He wasn’t the monster under the bed. He was only a bad man. A pathetic, bad man. And there are many bad men in the world. Killing one changes nothing. He was not unique. He was not special. His only true weapon was making people believe he was important. And even if he was all those things, even if he was the Devil in the flesh, Cass doesn’t believe in killing to begin with. It’s wrong.
From behind her, leaves rustle and twigs scattered about snap under cautious footsteps drawing closer. It appears someone else decided to pay a visit. She already has her suspicions as to who it is; the tally of those who would come here rests in the single digits.
“I wasn’t expecting anyone else here.” The man says, deceptively placid and with a timidness uncharacteristic to his name. Such a voice clashes against his actions.
Jason.
“You’re…on house arrest.”
Cass turns to face him, and his appearance further deceives the known past: a red hoodie, worn out at the cuffs, and black sweatpants held together by a fraying string. He is solemn. Haunted. Avoidant. He does not look like a murderer.
“I asked for permission. Alfred’s waiting back at the trail. He chauffeured me. I…I didn’t know you were going to be here. It’s a coincidence. I promise.”
“Okay.” She turns back to the stone. Pay him no more mind than he deserves.
The forest dances in their silence. Small sprigs twitch and jitter along the rows of dying, rotting bush. Wide, thick tree trunks creak and moan with each new gust, moving back and forth and from side to side while their leaves chafe against themselves, mimicking the sound of an audience’s exit. Complete and total solitude.
It is a peaceful sort of decay. Not loud or boastful in its rot, but persistent nonetheless. The Joker would hate it.
“It…it wasn’t supposed to happen like this.”
He says it slivers above a hush, so light as to be carried away by the swaying breeze. Is this a statement, or a confession?
“It—it was all planned out. Everything,” Jason continues; his words stumble over one another like a speech unprepared, but nonetheless spurred on by panic, “His death was…was going to mean something. I had it down to the smallest detail. There was going to be a decision. Either Bruce lets me kill him or Bruce has to kill me. Gotham would finally see peace. My actions were in service of that. The gangs would be controlled, the murderers would be slain, the streets would be clean. Crime could be tempered through me. But—but this…this wasn’t my goal. Nothing happened how it was meant to.”
“Do not lie to me.”
How naive does Jason believe her to be? He is no different from any other man who suffers. His pain does not make him exceptional. It does not create virtue.
Others believe Cassandra Cain a dullard. They think she is less intelligent, less aware, less self-conscious. “Her upbringing has made her a dreamer, she who hopes for a world where killing never comes. Poor, stupid girl.” They do not need to say it, not a word, because she reads it on them. That is writing she knows well. Their posture, their forced smiles, their condescension. Cassandra Cain is a brute who denies any shade of gray. That is what they want to see.
And she ignores them, lets them spout their idiocy. What they believe doesn’t change who she is. There is no use in proving a truth to those who willfully shun it. Cass knows her beliefs, so let them judge in ignorance.
But she will not let Jason redefine death. He will not turn cold murder into misguided thinking.
“How it happened changes nothing. You killed.”
Gone is Jason’s hesitance, his grief. Now it is a frown, fevered and righteous.
“I was trying to do what Bruce wouldn’t, what he refused. The Joker’s death should’ve—should’ve been a statement. Purposeful. Not…not like this.”
“Who does it doesn’t matter. The result is the same. There is no meaning. Evil only changes hands. And killing is wrong.”
He becomes furious, red and steaming.
“That’s the kind of logic that allows monsters like him to hurt others time and time again! You stop them, but never without casualties—never without bodies to bury. They go to Arkham or Blackgate for a month at most and then break out to kill more. It’s perpetual! And I was going to end it!”
“You killed many. Not just the worst. You make everything justified…everyone ‘worthy’. You hide actions behind lies!”
“I killed pedophiles, rapists, drug-dealers who sold to children. They don’t change! Monsters like them don’t deserve to live.”
“Then why are you still here? What makes you different? Why want something…you don’t believe in?”
“Don’t equate me with them,” Jason snaps, “Since coming back, I have seen the absolute worst of humanity, the most evil, unrepentant scumbags to ever grace the earth. Soulless assholes who take pride in their sickness, who will never change as long as they draw breath. And I refuse to apologize for wiping them out.”
“…What was Tim?”
The redolent stench grows stronger, as if the corpse beneath spews rancid breath from below. Names hold power, and Tim’s name holds power above all—even when disfigured. However much Jason postures, however much he justifies, it will always fail in the face of an inescapable decision, a monstrous deed for which there is no defense.
And Bruce may try to mitigate, may try to turn blame towards tales of green fire, but Cass knows where it truly lies—there is one man and one man alone to condemn.
Jason’s fervor, his defense, deflates. The Red Hood is left without a cause.
“…I don’t defend what I did to him. I know it was inexcusable and…and I’ll suffer for it. But it—it was an accident. I didn’t mean to take it that far. It’s not the same as those guys. Those people were evil.”
Violence is violence. No justification changes what can be seen plainly. It has grammar, styles, flowing lines more intimate and intricate than any written poetry. And it does not lie. It was Cass’ first language. And she knows it better than Jason ever could. Her words were bullets and blades, arrows and darts. She was taught to read the human body, every thought thought, every expression expressed, every emotion emoted.
That is why she understands violence. It was her communication, her sole method of interaction. When she shot bullseye after bullseye, ballistic gelatin ruptured in splatters of fake gore, it was violence—but also pride. When she was isolated, abandoned to the confines of training rooms and bare mattresses, it was violence—but also safety. When her father shot her, stabbed her, beat her, it was violence—but also love.
Cass was denied the spoken word. She was denied the privilege of speech, because what use was a weapon that could talk? It would hamper her ability to kill. So she made do with fists and knives and guns. But in truth, violence was far more than a language to her, it’s the one thing she was allowed to know. It was her world. Her existence. Her purpose.
And due to this, she knows speech is its own form of murder. Death to meaning, erasing the depth of what has been done and what will be done. “Tim was murdered” becomes “Tim died” becomes “Tim is no longer with us”. Each revision rubbing away reality’s hard, sharp edges and smoothing them to inoffensive fiction. Cass knows violence in its truest form, every manifestation conceivable. Understands each facet and rhythm, from the physical to the emotional to the psychological. It was where she was born. Where she was made.
So when Cass took the life of her first and only kill—when she read that man’s death as one would a novel—her fluency betrayed her. His pain, his fear, his suffering became enmeshed with hers. The man she murdered was not an innocent victim—very much not so, in fact. He was exactly the kind of person Jason would target. But she felt that death. The man’s actions in life became irrelevant, because she felt what she took. And she vowed to never do it again. She knew killing must be stopped.
Jason is a pretender. A failed scholar. He mimics the language, but can only manage the voice of an amateur. He will never earn the same breadth of knowledge.
“You want redemption,” Cass responds, “Why do you get…what they don’t? You want what you deny.”
The winds pick up as if in agreement with her. Dried, dead leaves and broken twigs clatter against the dirt as they’re lifted off into twirling swirls traveling into the treeline. The stone sits still—unmoving, unwavering, and oblivious to the motion of what happens above. Earth moves on without it, and for that it remains ignored. What lies beneath the ground will be lost. It will stay here while people move on, while life continues to be lived, and eventually it becomes no more than a footnote in some dusty book. This stone has no importance.
Our actions define us, but evil only breeds irrelevance. A meaningless death for a meaningless man.
“…I stopped him once, you know. Back when I was Robin. I stopped Bruce from killing him.”
Jason grips his arm hard. His head is tucked down in shame.
“It happened after we stopped a burglary. Selina was there. She was…getting softer, I guess. Leaning more on the side of the law rather than off it. She helped us put her former gang behind bars. And Bruce was…he was happy. Genuinely happy.
“They were being gross in a flirty kinda way, and it seemed like they were actually going to make things out this time. Bruce was hopeful. I was hopeful. But then he got involved.
“He kidnapped her. Tortured her. Reconditioned her. Brainwashed her. She went back to her old ways, all while he watched and laughed. Bruce’s future died. And he lost it. He started beating on the guy, punch after punch. He was screaming at him, he said ‘For years, you’ve sneered and laughed at everything decent, but no more.’ And then I realized…Bruce was going to kill him right then and there.”
His body shivers, trembles despite the mild weather. A watery sheen appears on his eyes. It is pain made tangible, and she witnesses his torture as if it were her own. Guilt. Agony. Fury. Hate.
“And I…and I stopped him. I told him to stop, because he’ll kill him. And then—Bruce said The Joker always takes something, every person he loves, and I told him ‘You might have lost Selina, but you caught him, you saved lives. That means something.’ So he…he let go. He—he let go.
“I should’ve said nothing. That man crippled Barbara, assaulted her. He killed me. And all the—all the people who would still be here had I kept my stupid mouth shut, all the lives that could’ve been saved had I not doomed them. It’s…it’s all my fault. I can never repay that.”
No. He’s a fool.
“You learned the wrong lesson. You were evil…for everything else.”
Fire brews in Jason’s eyes. Her truth clashes against his constructions, and so he lashes out.
“You’ll never understand! You were raised by a psychopath! Your entire worldview was built from an obscene upbringing. I grew up on these streets, and I know this city’s evil better than anyone! You cannot change this place through second chances. It doesn’t work.
“And for all your talk about redemption and ‘doing better’, none of you give me a single chance. No matter how much I apologize, or even begin to try and make amends, I’m shut down and ostracized and cut off! I—I’m fucking hated by all of you. You—you believe in redemption for everyone except for me!”
“It’s never too late… to start being a better person. Everyone deserves that…even you. But redemption…comes second in your heart. You want love more than amends. You haven’t tried. Your ‘redemption’ is selfish.”
However much Jason’s guilt may be genuine, no matter how sincere his regret festers, it’s made meaningless in the face of what remains true to this very moment. It will always be a non-priority.
When Jason killed Tim at Titans Tower, an important revelation was unmasked—a confirmation far more potent and influential than the mere heinousness of his deeds. That being…Bruce’s love for Jason was completely and totally unconditional. He forgave Jason for killing another—a boy so close to Bruce the man considered him a son, and let that love cloud his responsibility. Tim’s murder went unanswered.
Pure, unmitigated love. It was what Jason always desired, always craved. And he would never want to let that go.
He remains functionally unchanged. Jason still believes crime must be controlled through death, he still believes there are those who deserve to be executed for their actions, he still believes Bruce fails to solve the problems plaguing Gotham, but those no longer matter. As long as that love remains everlasting, as long as Bruce looks past the monument of his son’s slain, Jason will always choose love over redemption, comfort over truth. Guilt can be lived with, love cannot be lived without.
“I am not a…foolish optimist.” Cass states, her fists clench, and the wind simmers down, the leaves rest on top of the stone, “Sometimes words fail…and action must be made. Bad men will be stopped. But in action we must be just. You know this city better than me… but I know people better than you. Violence does not purify. Death is not purity. It is corruption.”
From the treetops, the chirps and cries of birds overhead scatter about in the air. They are jubilant, diving and swooping in rapid motions, threading through trunks and stems. Away from the others, two Robins sit perched on a lone branch from opposite ends, each wary of the other. Their shared identity brings no bond.
“The Joker wasn’t some—some guy! He was a monster! He’s filled graveyards, overstuffed morgues!
“He…he beat me while my mother watched. I felt my skull fracture. I heard my own bones snap. And he…and he laughed. He kept laughing. That awful, awful noise. And yet…yet I still tried to save her, still tried to be good despite what he had done. But it…but it didn’t change anything. Being good killed me!”
Her rebuttal comes quick.
“Taking away humanity is dangerous. It…allows us to ignore our own potential. To do wrong. To be cruel. To commit evil. You can say ‘I am not a monster, so my actions…are moral. I am not as bad as them.’ If your enemy is not a person…anything can be justified. It ignores…what we don’t like to hear: the worst humans…are human.”
Cass stares again at the grave. The stone stays unmoving, unwavering, unimportant. It is not like the urn at Wayne Manor. It holds no sway, no statement, no resonance. It is a rock. Only a rock.
Jason balks at her, “The Joker was the embodiment of evil. For everything he’s taken, for everything he’s corrupted. His death needed meaning. It…it needed to be me. I needed to do it. Not some random traffickers!”
“Then you give him more importance than he deserves. You immortalize a…failed comedian. His death was another senseless one…like all others. He is not more than a man.”
Early on in her days as Batgirl…there was a case. A father and a son. She still holds it close to her. It’s a reminder of why her views stay strong, why she will never change her stance. Gotham only confirms what she already knows.
“There was a boy. He came up to me. Said he heard his father planning a robbery. He told me ‘My Dad’s not…a bad man. He just thinks about money too much. Please stop him…before he does something bad.’ So I did.
“…But his father was bad. He killed his own friend…because he was ‘too greedy’. Complimented another because he killed a cop. No remorse. No regret. I stopped them. The boy came up to me later. Asked ‘My dad…he’s bad. Isn’t he?’ I said… ‘Yes. He is. But…you’re…not.’
“What would killing that man accomplish? To take a father away from his son… just because he was bad? What was the son’s crime? Loving his father, even though he was cruel? I refuse to deny people…second chances. Even him. Even you. Death steals redemption. But you must work hard for it. It is a…lifetime commitment. And you refuse to work.”
“Great story,” Jason drips with sarcasm, animosity disguised as righteousness, “but I have one of my own. When I was with Talia, she sent me to teachers associated with the League. She would help me learn what I couldn’t under Bruce. And one of the teachers I met was an assassin. Murder for hire. Millions per contract.
“But that wasn’t the only business he had. He was a filthy child sex trafficker. Children no older than ten drugged and chained in the back of a cold truck, only to be used as sex toys to whoever was willing to pay the most. That man was a monster. So I killed him. I poisoned his energy drink. I have no regrets.
“And before you say it, going to the police was a no. I overheard that some of them were in on it. The authorities couldn’t help me. So I was on my own. I solved it the only way I could. And I didn’t kill a person. I killed a reptile. No amount of rehabilitation would work. No redemption exists for those like him.”
Jason lies. He hides actions, omits details, to make himself a savior. There were no noble goals, no moral values. He tries to paint himself an unsung hero. But Cass knows the full story. She knows what he leaves out.
“You are a liar. ‘She would help me learn…what I couldn’t under Bruce’ is a euphemism. You went to learn how to murder. You tried to kill Bruce. Didn’t go through with it because it was ‘too easy’…the way you chose. You killed because you wanted to. The reasoning…serviced the immorality. It was an excuse. You made up excuses to kill. But they were only that. Excuses.
“You did not go there to help children. You went…to learn how to hurt. The children were an unforeseen byproduct. It was never about others…it was only about you. Your selfishness. Your desires. Do not pretend to care about morals…because your actions were never about them!”
“You don’t fucking know me!” His fists tremble, his voice cracks, molten-like—he’s furious, “You can try to analyze me like a stupid armchair psychologist all you want, but you’re nothing except an absolutist preaching salvation for the damned! Your beliefs kill people!”
“No, Jason…you kill people. It’s always been you. Only you.”
When Cass was learning how to speak, she watched a lot of television. Any and all kinds of programs. Reality, drama, comedy. One particular kind of program Cass enjoyed was called a “sitcom”.
There were formulas—structured plots and beats to each episode. Maybe Character A and Character B got into a fight or had a disagreement. They would squabble and instigate one another with increasingly petty provocations. Things would heat to a boiling point, and their true emotions would come out. At the crescendo, an understanding would be reached, both sides recognizing the validity of the other, and things would go back to normal.
The power of friendship, of family, was absolute in those worlds. Differences were mere distinctions. Love conquered all adversity. Family and friends were what powered the heart.
But what would happen if Character A and Character B were fighting over something far more dire than who takes who to the dance or who gets to ask out the boy they both crush on? What if their differences were utterly incompatible, if they were unable to amend their worldviews? What if the issue was not a mere trivial matter, but literal life and death? What if there was murder? What if they killed one of their own?
The show would fall apart, of course.
But Jason and Bruce still want their sitcom. They want Wayne Family Adventures. A cast of characters who are varied in backgrounds, in disciplines, in values—yet are still bound by familial love. Their love connects them, bridges all gaps, because differences are merely that. Differences. Each problem is resolved before the episode ends. Each conflict serves to bring them closer. Each fight is love wrongly expressed through anger.
Cass will not participate. Lines can be crossed, and once they are, differences stop being differences and start being complicities. She refuses to be complicit. Death deserves more than the confines of a simple, rhythmic cycle. It is absolute, total and irreversible. Even if the body comes back, even if a miracle graces itself on fate, the death remains. The pain, the trauma, the experience, it endures.
Which is why she hates him. A man who has experienced death still chooses to inflict such a devastation on others. Trauma is a license to him. A given permission. He refuses her…because he believes he has nothing to learn. Inaction has absolved him. Regret is the limit of his consequence.
“You’re a simplistic—” Jason starts.
Cass cuts him off.
“There will come a day…when someone turns your beliefs…onto you. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not a year. But it will happen. Someone who you hurt…may figure you out…and take matters into their own hands. Someone who believes you to be irredeemable. Someone who believes you to be monstrous. Someone who believes cruelty towards you is right. You have made that inevitable. So it will come. And what will you say? What…will be your defense? Will you hate them…even as they reflect yourself? Or will you accept that judgement…for the very first time?”
“That…that won’t happen.” Jason wavers, and she reads it. Hesitance. Self-soothing. Denial. “Nobody will mourn a dealer who sold to kids, nobody will mourn a rapist, nobody will mourn a pedophile.”
It’s tragic…avoidable…is the word Cass would use to describe it. The future is ominous, and a disaster awaits. But Jason blinds himself to the stormy clouds brewing above—invisible yet impossible to miss. “If” is not the question…but “when” and “who”.
When it comes, Cass will try to stop it—prevent the cycle from repeating. If not for Jason’s sake, then for Gotham’s. Nobody deserves to die. Not him. Not anyone. But it’s already in firm motion, and she fears the machine will crash down on them unimpeded. She can only hope no one else falls into the same eternal trap—the belief that your rage makes you holy.
“Goodbye, Jason. This conversation…is over. Have fun alone with your rock.”
Her departure has no weight to it. No loaded significance. It is the simple act of leaving a man who refuses to change, who refuses to listen. Cass can’t convince him. Unfortunate—but so is everything else.
How much future suffering could have been avoided…had he learned a consequence delayed only strengthens the rebound?
The forest continues to breathe serene, deep swells. The trees hum with the shifts of the wind, the birds preen and chirp in symphonic flocks, and the dried stream crackles with the intake of parched air. It is alive—triumphant in spite of decay, despite the restless march encroaching on their ground. It thrives despite the end; indifferent to ephemeral human cruelty.
Yet the stone is lifeless. It does not breathe or preen or chirp or crackle. There is no poetry. It does not watch her leave with ghostly eyes, it does not bleed evil or malice or anger. It is a moss-covered rock. Plain and insignificant. Nothing was left behind, no vestige or imprint or mark. Because the life it represents did not live—it destroyed, it killed, it ruined. And so its value becomes desolate, denied of worth. The Joker did not matter. His power died with him.
She hopes Jason can avoid such a fate. It’s not too late to turn back. But Cass knows what’s to come is as set as the stone. Jason refuses to step away from his path. Redemption is impossible for no one, but it must be wanted in earnest. Jason does not seek redemption…only absolution.
If she never spoke to him again, it would still be too soon. Cass exits in silence.